The present disclosure generally relates to a method for restoring settings of an instrument for processing a sample or reagent and a system comprising an instrument for processing a sample or reagent and a storage medium.
In vitro diagnostic testing has a major effect on clinical decisions by providing physicians with pivotal information. Particularly, there is great emphasis on providing quick and accurate test results in critical care settings. In vitro diagnostic testing is usually performed using instruments operable to execute one or more processing steps/workflow steps on one or more biological samples and/or one or more reagents, such as pre-analytical instruments, post-analytical instruments and also analytical instruments.
Analytical instruments/analyzers are configured to obtain a measurement value. An analyzer is operable to determine via various chemical, biological, physical, optical or other technical procedures a parameter value of the sample or a component thereof. An analyzer may be operable to measure the parameter of the sample, or of at least one analyte, and return the obtained measurement value. The list of possible analysis results returned by the analyzer comprises, without limitation, concentrations of the analyte in the sample, a digital (yes or no) result indicating the existence of the analyte in the sample (corresponding to a concentration above the detection level), optical parameters, DNA or RNA sequences, data obtained from mass spectroscopy of proteins or metabolites and physical or chemical parameters of various types. An analytical instrument may comprise units assisting with the pipetting, dosing, and mixing of samples and/or reagents. The analyzer may comprise a reagent holding unit for holding reagents to perform the assays. Reagents may be arranged for example in the form of containers or cassettes containing individual reagents or group of reagents, placed in appropriate receptacles or positions within a storage compartment or conveyor. It may comprise a consumable feeding unit. The analyzer may comprise a process and detection system whose workflow is optimized for certain types of analysis. Examples of such analyzer are clinical chemistry analyzers, coagulation chemistry analyzers, immunochemistry analyzers, urine analyzers, nucleic acid analyzers, used to detect the result of chemical or biological reactions or to monitor the progress of chemical or biological reactions.
In order to ensure proper operation of the instruments and a way to restore setting of the instrument in case of a malfunction/defect, restoring data for restoring settings of the instrument are stored on a storage medium communicatively connected to the instrument. This is usually performed in a so-called backup operation carried out regularly.
Known instruments are configured to receive a storage medium with restoring data and to recover the instrument settings therefrom. One known solution is that the instrument software is provided with a feature to read the restoring data and restore the instrument settings accordingly. However, there are cases when the instrument software itself becomes inoperable and/or inaccessible so that even the feature to recover the instrument settings is unavailable and/or unreliable.
In order to address such cases, prior art instruments are known which are configured to receive a bootable recovery media and boot up the instrument from said bootable recovery media, the latter comprising functionality to recover the instrument settings.
However, configuring an instrument to accept bootable recovery media and boot therefrom introduces major security vulnerability as it leaves open the option to boot from malicious bootable media. For example such malicious bootable media comprises software code which is designed to circumvent the data protection and/or the authentication-authorization mechanisms of the instrument.
Therefore, there is a need for an efficient, flexible and secure backup procedure of an apparatus for processing a sample or reagent, particularly of an off-line apparatus, such as a medical device, in case of a system failure.